Face Nom

Street Photography Now Challenge - Week 21

"Be aware of the way the camera compresses a three dimensional world into a two dimensional plane and use that to your advantage" - Nick Turpin

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"Slow down..."

"Slow down, the next picture may be very quiet and close." - Bruno Quinquet

Businessman with a parking ticket, Belfast, 2011 (SPN Challenge 20)

Week 20 was a tough one. Bruno Quinquet's statement was a more open brief than most of the recent posts in the Street Photography Challenge. Plenty of of the early posts in the Instruction No.20 Flickr pool, and discussion boards, were aiming on a 'good' street photo because of the openness of the brief (or so I gather from reading the threads), and the results have been good.

Bruno Quinquet, Salaryman Project, 2009

I first came across Quinquet's work at this time last year when his series on Japanese salarymen, Obsession of a salaryman otaku, was published in the 1000words Photography Magazine (Spring 2010). I was instantly hooked. Here was a photographer who was exploring a breed of working man bound by cultural constraints, constraints imposed by a distinctly Japanese view of the working world. Quinquet's poetic portraits documented the salarymen but also embodied, through his choice of composition and colour, the fleeting and transient beauty that is magnificently celebrated within Japanese visual culture.

Bruno Quinquet, Salaryman Project, 2009

In his artist statement for the series Quinquet wrote: "On one hand, it explores the identity of the average Japanese male office worker, called salaryman, letting mystery and poetry blossom in the supposedly boring corporate world. On the other hand, by concealing the subjects’ identities, the project tries to adapt in a creative way to the increasing constraints of portraits rights on candid street photography."

Woman waiting on a bus, Belfast, 2011

So, with the Salaryman Project in mind, I began shooting this weeks brief with the intentions of ferreting out workers seeking quiet and peaceful moments during their working days. Since the salaryman phenomenon does not exist in Northern Ireland my challenge was harder, but not impossible. I also wanted to avoid the repetition of a previous SPN challenge that urged the photographers to find people who were lost in thought amidst the new urban environment. The woman above was photographed through a bus shelter window, hence the strange lightened area where light has been reflected, and I loved how her cap covered just enough of her face to conceal her identity.

My entered image for this week, found beneath the brief at the top of this post, had some of the mystery of Quinquet's salarymen with the man's face being obscured by shadow. The layers within the portrait come from the green mesh fence, which protects the car park, and the glistening reflections upon the car. The colour in the image comes across more as a barrage of turgid tones than the simple palettes found in the Salaryman Project; however, the red brick is a stalwart in Belfast, and the blue sky reflecting on the car only highlights the fresh weather we are experiencing at this time of year. The simple action of searching for and reading a parking ticket is probably something he does every single day... Again, this leaves me celebrating the transience of things. Mono no aware.

Another week bested... Only 32 to go!

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Forgotten Roll from 2010

It has taken too long to get around to scanning this roll of film (Kodak 400vc), which was shot in 2010 over a period of months. The reasons behind the photos range from photo-adventure walks to recording the length of my 'dissertation' beard.

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New Urban Disconnect

"Expose the banalities of the new urban landscape" - George Georgiou

This is the nineteenth Instruction for the Street Photography Now Project, written to inspire fresh ways of looking at and documenting the world we all live in.

This challenge was later expanded on the Flickr group thread by George Georgiou:

"Hello all, this is George Georgiou. The quote is not quite how I put it, I wouldn't have used the word Banal. What I am interested in is what the relationship is between a modern planned urban/suburban space and the individual. In other words, planned public space where people can feel comfortable or familiar with but allows people to move through this space without contact, we almost become invisible to each other. Often these are made to a blueprint, airports, housing estates, bus stations, shopping malls etc. If you watch people in these spaces you notice a disconnect, people in their own worlds/minds. It is this disconnect from what is around you that I find interesting. A simple example is how people talk on the mobile, as if they are at home, in private. Eggleston and Shore are good examples of this. What they look at is very 'commonplace'. The urban environment and peoples interaction with it. I hope that helps. George"

I feel that the above image ties in closer to what George said on the forum. The woman is completely lost in thought whilst typing a text. Her expression is fixed and stern, her walk was brisk. The other face in the image adds to the 'disconnection', the woman is oblivious to the man looking at her (and he is oblivious to me).

My 'B-side' this week focused on the banal. I always find that a stringent deadpan approach to photographing is ideal for capturing 'banality'. I love the word banal, and banality is verbalised best in Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1983)... See the scene here!

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Four Years

Four years ago our Nana passed away. It really doesn't feel like four years has passed since then. It got me thinking though... I was starting to photograph on a daily basis when it happened and, in retrospect, it was another way of dealing with everything that was going on.

So, below I have posted the second poem I wrote after Nana's death (the first was much more vengeful and not really fitting to be read a service), which was read by Steven Burns at the funeral. I have also added the last photograph of our granny to be taken (seen above), and a few images I produced on the morning of the funeral. It was the also the first and last time I photographed my father (see below).

Life’s Haste (2007)

We are not the sea or the silver stars of the sky.

We are not the hills or mighty moon… Why?

‘Cause we are Mortal Men: fated to die.

A haunting thought to most, but I ask you

To look again at Mortal Men: to review

our span on Earth. Yes, it’s short and fast.

Ever racing and chasing; spinning present to past.

The first flake of virginal snow cannot linger,

If it did- no playing or hooraying would ensue.

The sun cannot be tardy in reaching the summit,

If it did- darkness and gloom would reign supreme.

Yet we remember: the golden dawn and powdery puff

For their befuddling beauty is ample enough.

A human life is akin to all of these

Like light glinting on the still seas

surface. There and gone. Like Cortez’s gold

We should hold them in our mind. Not

so we are eternally saddened at the passing-

That we remember, with vigor, their Being.

So crystallize those treasures and avoid Time’s

Ravages and traps! Use pictures and rhymes,

Stories and thoughts- to keep that person

Place or view perpetually fresh and anew.

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I hardly slept the night before the funeral. Going for a walk whilst the sun was coming up seemed like the best way to gather my thoughts and emotions before meeting the family or dealing with events of the day. Now I wish I had photographed the full day so I had more portraits and images but, and I think this was Robert Capa who said it, to photograph a funeral you cannot be part of the procession.

'Nana' Margaret McMullan - May you rest in peace.

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Bus Bricolage

The SPN Challenge for Week 18 stated: "Look for a window. Through a window, out a window or at the reflections on a window" - Arif Asci.

Phew, I made it this week! With the possibility of playing with reflections and refractions how could I really miss it? Natural superimposition? Yes please! Any excuse to use the word bricolage in a title...

Ok, so it was hard not to repeat one of my earlier entries this week by placing myself in the midst of the reflections. Of course, there are times when those images must be taken [see below].

This week I saw the challenge as a great way to explore the experimental and Modernist route. Looking in reflections and through glass allows several perspectives to overlap, or superimpose - to borrow a filmic term. Artists such as Andy Warhol and Stan Brakhage experimented with this process of natural collage to achieve fantastic results.

In this image there are seemingly an infinite amount of worlds converging: the bus, the people in the bus, the world seen through the bus (trees, houses), the numbers reflected off of a shop window behind me, iron mesh from the shop front, etc. The end result is a chaotic barrage of visual, and textual, information; yet, the people in the photo remain perfectly placid and only the viewer is subject to this amalgamated perspective.

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